Thursday, June 25, 2009

Chapter 3


I crossed the border into Washington on the 395, where I stopped at a coffee place in Kennewick, hoping to sell some books at random. I stood behind this old man while he talked to the counter girl for 10 literal minutes. I looked over my shoulder at my dogs in the van, and they watched me back, and I thought about how they saw everything, and it started to make sense to me to punch the old man in the back with all my strength, because he saw me in line and he knew he was being a pain in the ass. Just as I was about to exhale a Jesus Fucking Christ he walked away and I had lost the feeling of talking about myself or the books or any of it. The coffee turned out to be free because it was old. I loaded it with milk and sugar but ended up trashing it before I got off the sidewalk.


The drive through Spokane was mindless for the most part, because there was some scattered rain and the sun had fallen, and because I was thinking about a job I'd worked seven years back, building barns for horse shows along I5 from Monroe, Washington down to Burbank, but also along this same road to Spokane, where I had once met a girl in a thrift store and stayed with her at her place on Mission, a little house on the corner. Now she was in Hawaii and I was in my van. I thought about Hawaii and the time I met her. I was glad to be in the van hauling books and headed around the country. It made more sense this way, like it made more sense to blow through Idaho at night, where I broke the Montana border, found a rest area so the dogs could run and I could lay the blankets out across the back seat.

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